The FTA Paradigm for the Configuration of World Trade and Foreign Investment: The Case of Outward Processing Zones

Abstract

This article explores whether international investment liberalization and its regulation should be conceived through the prisms of world trade within the context of the practice of Free Trade Agreements. In section 2-4, the paper addresses the relationship between investment and trade liberalization, including the propriety of any cross-fertilization of the international disciplines in the two fields. In section 5, the case study of the manner in which the phenomenon of Export Processing Zones qua investment regimes is configured from a legal perspective in FTAs, is analysed.